Notes:-ess the most productive -stress dead, no longer used in word formartion -enne and -euse borrowed from French -e borrowed from French, written only -ster no longer a feminizing suffix, indication of any person male or female: gangster, youngster, prankster, etc

use

carefully! offensive unnecessary demeaning

English

has 50 pairs of words with separate forms for the masculine and feminine.

-ie, -i, -y -ette -kin, -ikin, -kins -ling -et -let

The vowels of the diminutive suffixes are the front vowels: /i/, / /, and / /.-ie, -i, -yhighly

productive. attached to one-syllable first name to suggest endearment and intimacy, or smallness. e.g. Johnny, Jacky, Mikey attaced to common nouns, sometimes indicating a diminutive notion about a participant in a discourse more than about the person or thing being referred to. e.g. doggie, mommy, nanny, birdie, sweetie

-ette

productive indicates

smallness

e.g. dinnete small dining area roomette small room kitchenette small kitchen

-kin, -ikin, -kins -ling -et -let

unproductive rarely

added to new nouns in some words, the meaning of the diminutive suffix has faded away to little/no significance. e.g. cabinet, toilet

In addition to the six diminutives, many others have come into English as a part of borrowed words. They are diminutives in their own parent language but nonmorphemic in English.e.g. mosquito bambino armadillo peccadillo flotilla Priscilla cookie colonel citadel novel panel morsel damsel scalpel satchel muscle particle pupil violin violoncello puppet Venezuela quartet bulletin falsetto stiletto Maureen lochan formula capsule calculus

Most

of the borrowed diminutives contain the vowels /i/, /I/, and // although the vowels have often been reduced to // in English because of lack of stress.

The pattern of occurrence of related forms in which each form occupies its own territory and does not trespass on another domain is called complementary distribution. When the related forms of a set have the same meaning and are in complementary distribution, they are called allomorphs/positional variants and belong to the same morpheme. Thus, the morpheme {-D pt} has 3 allomorphs, i.e. /d/, /-t/, and /-d/ formula: {-D pt} = /-d/ ~ /-t/ ~ /-d/

Notes: { } morpheme / / allomorphs (~) tilde, i.e in alternation with

Thus,

it is really not the morpheme but the allomorph that is free or bound.

Conditioning (Morphological and Phonological)

morpheme {-D pt} (-d ~ -t ~ -d) morpheme {-s pl} (-z ~ -z ~ -s) the phonological environment determines which allomorph is used, it can be said that the selection of allomorphs is phonologically conditioned.

When

Morpheme {-s pl} (-n ~ ) e.g. ox oxen sheep sheep

Complementary

distribution because they stay in own territory, associate only with specific words, and do not overlap with (-z ~ -z ~ -s) positions. position has nothing to do with their phonological environment.the plural noun is determined by the specific morpheme (e.g. n, ) and the environment that requires a certain allomorph is only by identifying specific morpheme, the selection of allomorph is called morphologically conditioned.